


Needful Thing

by idyll



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Episode Related, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-01
Updated: 2007-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The vibrations spread until he's trembling like a newborn, his mouth open and unknowing, his eyes ancient and needful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needful Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pouncer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pouncer/gifts).



They put Reid on enforced leave but don't require him to see one of the counselors on staff. The latter was Gideon's call and when Derek thinks about it he realizes it makes sense: Reid is too smart to be counseled unless he wants it.

Right now? Reid doesn't want it. Derek understands. He's had his own moments of feeling entitled to his pain, of clinging to it and refusing to even contemplate letting go of it because it's too horrific and complicated for anyone else to understand.

Derek thinks that's where Reid is right now and he tells himself over and over that it's okay, it's to be expected, it's even _natural_.

He still finds himself at Reid's door in the middle of the night, though, and he's completely unsurprised when Reid answers his faint, half-hearted knock almost immediately.

Reid lets him in after a long, hard stare, and without saying a word. Derek stays silent and shoulders his way past Reid and into an apartment that is furnished sparsely by certain standards--a small television tucked into a corner on a rickety stand, an old futon and a coffee table being the only _furniture_\--but is cluttered with hundreds of books and magazines and journals, which form a teetering multi-tiered landscape along walls, and rise up like skyscrapers from the middle of the floor.

The first night, Reid closes himself in his bedroom and leaves Derek in the living room with the small television and a marathon of _Dirty Jobs_. By the third night Reid is leaving his bedroom every hour to limp awkwardly to the outskirts of the living room and stare at Derek, who meets his gaze openly and honestly.

By the fifth night, Reid is curling up on the opposite end of the futon from Derek while he flips between various Discovery stations. Reid seems to give his full and complete attention to the special on ants and the program on future cars, and Meerkat Manor especially entrances him.

Derek says nothing during each visit, and on the ninth night he's woken at three in the morning when Reid takes the remote from his slack grip and sits in the middle of the futon, his thigh pressing against Derek's.

"I miss it," Reid says when he sees that Derek's eyes are open. Derek blinks and shakes his head, feeling like he's coming into this conversation halfway through. Reid rubs each of his wrists with the fingers of his opposite hand, and digs the tips of his fingers into the soft hollows of his forearms, hard enough that Derek can see bruises raise before his very eyes. "I don't know how not to."

It's spoken in hushed tones, like a guilty secret, and Derek could cry. There are a lot of reasons people use drugs, a lot of things they're trying to escape, and Derek's always thought that Reid's mind has to be as much of a burden as a blessing.

Reid's hands start shaking, and the vibrations spread until he's trembling like a newborn, his mouth open and unknowing, his eyes ancient and needful. Derek goes to the kitchenette and comes back with a can of Coke, which he holds to Reid's mouth for long droughts until there's color in his face and coherency in his eyes.

There are a lot of things he could and even wants to tell Reid, but the only words he can make his lips form are, "I know, I know."

Reid leans on him after that, in the darkness of the living room that's home to a sprawling city of knowledge and one fine-boned boy of a man who tucks his legs under himself and can't seem to stop reaching for his feet.

Derek turns his head and presses his face into Reid's hair at the same time that he wraps an arm across his shoulders and remembers that, despite how it seems sometimes, Reid is far too broad and solid to be a _boy_. He holds on tighter, then, his hand like a cuff around Reid's bicep, and he can already picture the wide band of bruises that will remain when he finally lets go.

Reid shudders deeply one last time before relaxing, falling against Derek completely and totally, like his strings have been cut, and that's good enough for now.

.End


End file.
